Because Sir Doesn’t Care

After an incredibly stressful Year 11 lesson in which several members of that group had to be removed for defiant behaviour. This was the comment that greeted me the next day when a member of the class asked one student why they hadn’t been in the lesson the day before.

The comment was designed to wound and I was acutely aware of that and yet when the student said it, it still hurt. I was horrified that a student might think that I didn’t care about them. I asked myself that night, if in enforcing the school’s behaviour pathway and attempting to ensure that the classroom environment was calm and peaceful, so we could discuss ‘London’ by William Blake in a mature and sophisticated manner. Had I really sent out the message to the rest of the group that I didn’t care about them?

I’d sanctioned the students because I did care about them. I had them removed, because if I didn’t demonstrate to them that their behaviour was unacceptable then they would go on believing it was a perfectly acceptable way to act. Moreover, I also cared about the rest of the class, whose valuable learning time was being lost because of the childish behaviour of a small minority.

I’d heard similar comments across the school before, particularly when students were challenged about their own poor behaviour, “Oh it’s because Mr so and so, doesn’t like me” or “I always get into trouble in Miss’s class because Miss hates me.”

I’ve taught for nine years now and in a variety of challenging environments and I can say, hand-on-heart, I’ve never met a teacher who really hates a student.

I’ve met very distressed teachers hopelessly trying to get a student a ‘4’ in Maths who might bemoan the work-rate of a particular student.

Overworked teachers, who were giving up their holidays and weekends to plan and mark and host revision sessions who were rightfully angry that the same student had disrupted the learning of the group time and time again.

Deeply unhappy teachers, who simply could no longer face coming into work because they could no longer cope with constant bad behaviour in their classroom who might have hoped a particular student was absent from their class.

Each and everyone of these teachers cared.

However, it is not just students who accuse teachers and schools of not caring, society as a whole, seems to view teachers with great scorn and suspicion. Whether it be another ridiculous debate on school uniform, school start times or exclusions, there seems to be no end of people willing to stand up and tell us that we don’t care enough.

Worryingly, there seems to be a real disparity between what students and society in general, think care looks like in schools and what care actually does look like and this has and continues to have a worrying impact on education policy. As a profession, we do sometimes lean towards martyrdom, we do sometimes adopt the Boxer “I will work harder” mantra and it is this tendency that left us susceptible to some truly ludicrous ideas over the years, where teachers are encouraged to work harder and harder and under increasing pressure by adopting unsustainable policies in order to show the world just how much we care.

Staff, up and down the country, have been led to believe that caring is putting up with rude, aggressive and defiant student behaviours over and over again and having to constantly lower your standards as a teacher to accommodate such unruly students.

Staff have also been hit repeatedly with the differentiation stick over and over, as consultants and inspectors encouraged every teacher to plan three different lessons on three different types of coloured paper to ensure every student had a personalised learning journey in every lesson, every day.

Schools have been forced to keep students, whose behaviour is often dangerous, threatening and out-of-control, in their establishments because excluding children and upholding basic behaviour policies is anathema to some and will more than likely get the school compared to totalitarian regimes in the press or online.

There is undoubtedly always more that we could do. There is always more support and provision that could be put in place. There is always more differentiation that could be offered. But we must always ask, at what cost?

The truth is, teachers care all of the time and many show this by ensuring all of their students are given access to the best education possible, whatever their background. Ensuring that all students can feel safe at all times in their lessons and ensuring that all students have the best possible life chances when they leave school.

We do care, it is just that sometimes caring doesn’t look like it does in the depiction of teachers in films and on TV. It is not the teacher who shares too much of their personal life with the group. It is not the teacher who lets them watch a film in the last week of term rather than doing work. But it is also not necessarily the teacher who spends 60 hours a week marking books with a plethora of different coloured pens and stickers.

It is the teacher who is consistent, who has a love and deep understanding of their subject who turns up every day with high expectations and who ensures their classroom is a calm and safe place where everyone can achieve. That is caring because this is what our students need and we shouldn’t let anyone, well-meaning or not, tell us differently.